Do babies go to Heaven?

[PFKEY]

Hope no one minds the vanity too much.

I was thinking last night about this idea and was trying to make it jive somewhat with the notion of predeterminationalism if that is the correct word.

Also was curious regarding what the various Christian denominations taught on this subject.

[fortheDeclaration]

From The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: "Also in <1 Pet 1:2> those to whom the apostle is writing are characterized as "elect according to the foreknowledge (prognosis) of God," where the election is based on the "foreknowledge." By the prognosis or foreknowledge, however, far more is meant than prescience. It has the idea of a purpose which determines the course of the Divine procedure. If it meant simply pre-vision of faith or love or any quality in the objects of the election, Peter would not only flatly contradict Paul ; but also such a rendering would conflict with the context of this passage, because the objects of election are chosen "unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of .... Christ," so that their new obedience and relation to Christ are determined by their election by God, which election springs from a "foreknowledge" which therefore cannot mean a mere prescience." Oops....I guess you can't fall back on foreknowledge either.

The ISBE is clearly coming from a Calvinist viewpoint, since Peter would not contradict Paul if he was saying that God 'pre-knew' who would believe and who would not given the light of the Gospel (2Cor.4:4) Paul was saying the same thing in Romans 8:28

Although we are nowhere told what it is in the foreknowledge of God that determines His choice, the repeated teachings of Scripture that man is responsible for accepting or rejecting salvation necessitates our postulating that it is man's reaction to the revelation God has made of Himself that is the basis of election. May we repeat: Since mankind is hopelessly dead in trespasses and sins and can do nothing to obtain salvation, God graciously restores to all men sufficent ability to make a choice in the matter of submission to Him. This is the salvation brining grace of God that has appeared to all men. In His foreknowledge He perceives what each one will do with this restored ability, and elects men to salvation in harmony with His knowledge of their choice of Him. There is no merit in this transaction...(Henry C. Thiessen, Introductory Lectures in Systmatic Theology, p.344-45)

[fortheDeclaration]

The God that spoke creation into existance gets what He wills Jael...unless of couse mans will is more powerful than Gods?

Man's will can reject the will of God,(we cannot avoid the consequences of that rejection)

You and I do just that when we sin (unless God really wants us to sin!)

[fortheDeclaration]

Well, one of your people posted that. Elect babies go to heaven. A baby can't believe, a baby can't be elected without believing.

We are dealing with Calvinists here, the Biblical view of salvation does not apply.

For the Calvinist faith is a result of salvation, not a cause.

So, 'elect' babies do not have to believe anything, since it is God's sovereign power that saves, not faith in the Cross and the work of Christ in the Cross.

They make the Cross of Christ of non effect with their view of Unconditional election.

For the Calvinist, an Omnipotent God did not have to go to the Cross to pay for sins, He just happened to choose that route for His own glory!

He could have just as well saved everyone without the Cross since it is His Omnipotence that is the basis for their salvation, not the merits of the Cross.

[fortheDeclaration]

Is God so weak that he can convert adults and children but not an infant? And who are you to say a baby can't believe? Have you seen a baby's mind? Do you think God is so weak that he could not cause a baby to believe?

You mean after He regenerated him first-right?

Checkmate

Another OP, Doc clone!

Since in Calvinism faith has nothing to do with using ones rational mind to accept or reject the free offer of salvation and the individual is totally passive, a baby could be made to believe the Gospel.

He would probably understand it as well as any adult Calvinist does!

[fortheDeclaration]

Alright... and?? FWIW, I'll stipulate that I personally believe (with the vast majority of historical Calvinist commentary) that God graciously ordains to apply the infinite Merit of Christ's atonement to those whom He has ordained to die in infancy. That said, what we have here is a clear application of Grace in the absence of volitional human choice "in favor of" that Grace. How exactly does this aid the Arminianist position?

It doesn't, it just arrives at the same conclusion with a different method.

The Calvinist can simply say that all who die in infancy are part of the elect through sovereign grace.

The Arminian would say that they are saved because of the condemnation of Adam is superseded by the grace of the Second Adam and is applied to all men and if they do not reject that grace, they are all saved.

Since an infant (or retarded person) could not reject the offer of salvation, they are saved by the blood of Christ, just as they were condemned by the sin of Adam.

The result in viewing infant salvation is the same, all infants saved, but based on differing premises.

[fortheDeclaration]

In any case, what is the support (logical/biblical) that baptists use for their position of believer's only baptism?

The key verse would be 1Pet.3:21 which explains that Baptism is only a figure of salvation, hence, being immersed represents our identification with the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ (1Cor.15:3-5)

[fortheDeclaration]

How exactly does this aid the Arminianist position? ~~ I am a Bible Believer. I am not part of any branch of Protestantism. My church or beliefs never came from Mother Rome. 126 posted on 12/31/2002 3:33 PM PST by Jael Sure they did. Arminianism was introduced into the Protestant Church by Jesuit Romanist design. You must remember, prior to the Jesuit introduction of Arminianism into the Protestant Church (circa 1600), all of the Protestant Reformers (Martin Luther, John Calvin, George Morel, etc.) were Absolute Predestinarians. Only after the Jesuit introduction of Arminianism into the Halls of Protestantism, did Protestants again begin to profess the unbiblical Ba'al-Religion that an unregenerate Man will "choose in favor" of God

There were always groups outside of the Roman Church, and that is who 'Jael' is referring to.

Baptists, for example, do not consider their lineage 'Protestant' since they hold that they were never part of the Roman Church and came out of it.

[fortheDeclaration]

Baptists do not understand the continuity of the covenant and therefore, reject paedobaptism.

I have never understood Calvinists who believe in unconditional election baptizing infants, as if that is going to make a difference in God's sovereign choice?

[fortheDeclaration]

However, there is no such Non-Romanist heritage of Anti-Predestinarians whatsoever

The issue of Predestination did not even begin until the 4th century with Augustine!

The Eastern Churches never held it!

Concerning Free Will and Predestination by St. John of Damascus (8th cent.) From his Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Book II, Chs. 25-30 http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/exact_freewill.htm

This is from Schaff, History of the Christian Church

The Augustinian system was unknown in the ante-Nicene age, and was never accepted in the Eastern Church. This is a strong historical argument against it. Augustin himself developed it only during the Pelagian controversy; while in his earlier writings he taught the freedom of the human will against the fatalism of the Manichaeans.816 It triumphed in the Latin Church over Pelagianism and Semi-Pelagianism, which were mildly condemned by the Synod of Orange (529). But his doctrine of an absolute predestination, which is only a legitimate inference from his anthropological premises, was indirectly condemned by the Catholic Church in the Gottschalk controversy (853), and in the Jansenist controversy (1653), although the name and authority of the great doctor and saint were not touched.

http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/history/8_ch14.htm

[fortheDeclaration]

And I believe that God gives every man His saving Grace, to accept or reject. He doesn't choose to save some, and choose not to save others.

Amen!

[fortheDeclaration]

A strange "seminary" it is, which does not spend even a single hour upon the study of the Gospel.

So Calvinism is the Gospel?

What is the Gospel according to Calvinism?

[fortheDeclaration]

A strange "seminary" it is, which does not spend even a single hour upon the study of the Gospel. We spent three years studying Scripture. It had a decidedly non-Calvinist bent, apparently.

LOL! Amen!

[fortheDeclaration]

And the history before the 4th century?

[George W. Bush]

The point is that Eastern Orthodoxy has watched the RC church for the last few hundred years and in some ways responded to what they saw by remaining committed to certain principles of religious freedom.

This isn't just Orthodox vs. Rome though. If you look at the history of various denominations, you see that particular religious principles become more entrenched by the antipathy of other churches or persecution by church/state collusion. Protestants vs. Rome, Orthodox vs. Rome, Puritans vs. Church of England, Baptists vs. everybody (heh-heh). This is part of an inevitable baggage that every denomination acquires the longer it survives and the longer its laity and clergy studies the Word and the writings of its own leadership and theologians. Almost any Christian denomination you might name has some of this baggage. I don't think this is necessarily displeasing to God. But I often wonder just where we have to draw the line at where a particular historical denomination has strayed from the Bible to the point that they are no longer Christian.

As an example, I'd mention that, for instance, Mormons are not orthodox Christians because of the grave defects they have in their view of the Trinity. In relative comparison, the church of Rome and the Orthodox and the Protestants and the Baptists and the vast majority of independent Bible churches and evangelical churches and charismatic churches are actually orthodox Christians. We all still maintain a certain common understanding of the Trinity, of Christ's earthly mission and other matters.

Even as a very rabid Baptist type myself, I can't accuse the Roman church of such grievous errors as the Mormons display.

And yet, there are still differences that can't be overlooked. When one sees how the Orthodox church increasingly separated from any sort of unity with Rome over the centuries, we Westerners can readily see the reasons. Our own Protestant and Baptist forbears left the church of Rome for many of the same reasons.

To a large extent, the Protestant churches were originally a movement to reform the corruptions and the superstitious practices of the church of Rome, primarily the blatant corruption of the clergy and particularly the upper hierarchy. But among those Reformers and their predecessors in the centuries preceding the Reformation, there were many people who were and considered themselves to be faithful Roman Catholics but they believed that Rome had seriously strayed theologically. It's hard to say that those proto-Protestants at that time were damned by their participation in Romish ritual. Of course, maybe they were. But when you read their writings, it's clear enough that they had a real spiritual hunger and a genuine desire to see Rome become a faithful sheperd of its flock. So I like to believe that, despite the accumulated errors of Roman practice, God still intervened to save some of those willing hearts. And I believe the same may still be true today.

And Rome is not immune to being influenced by others either, no matter what they claim. One can see that they have (reluctantly) responded to other denominations over the centuries. For instance, when they produced the Jesuit Bible, it was to appeal to English Catholics and was meant to compete directly with the Puritan Bibles and especially with the King James Bible. They made it as similar as they could. So the rise of literacy and the presence of Catholic remnants in Protestant countries required them to "compete" for those RCs in the English domains. They also wished to find a way to use their presence in the English colonies to forward their own missionary efforts as the British empire expanded around the world. In more modern times, they finally officially abandoned their suspicion of individual Bibly study about a century ago and one sees signs that they actually encourage Bible study (only with their own approved Bibles of course). Again, this is a change from the historical Roman church. I think they do this for a number of reasons. First, they were losing too many followers to non-Roman churches. Second, most of the money they need comes from the First World countries (America primarily) and they have to "compete" with non-Roman Bible-believing churches. But the Bible is more than a little dangerous for them. For instance, one sees no examples in scripture of any of Jesus' followers praying to Stephen or other early church martyrs. And none of them ever said a Hail Mary either nor does Mary occupy in the Bible anything resembling the role claimed by Rome for Mary as an intercessor or Co-Redemtrix (or whatever they invented about her lately). So, they have to compete Biblically in modern countries. But the Bible isn't terribly friendly to some of their accumulated errors. It's very interesting and really does bear watching in coming decades.

Particularly no clericalism, no worship of man, no worship of icons, either, and especially no authoritative, judgemental leaders telling this and that Christian they must leave the church because they are, well, such terrible sinners.

It's not hard to see that the Orthodox, much like Western Protestants/Baptists/etc., to some extent have been defined over the course of time by how they distinguish their practices and theology from Rome's errors.

Your mention of the Orthodox forbidding the worship of icons (veneration?) is interesting. I think most Westerners think that the Orthodox do worship icons. The icon issue is one that I see as another cultural/regional issue.

[George W. Bush]

I think this statement says it all. You still don't know what you are talking about. The KJV is derived from the Received Text, blah-blah-blah

You have a far narrower definition of the terms received text, majority text, traditional text than do the great scholars. Each one of these terms actually has meant different things to different scholars at different people. For instance, some say "majority text" in reference to the fact that 99% of all ancient manuscripts are in this text type and some use it in the sense that the majority of all ancient Bibles utilize readings from this text type. The origin of the term Received Text is actually pretty obscure as you may be aware. When one looks at the writings of Burgon and others, they repeatedly refer to this series of names as essentially denoting the same thing. I'm sure they were at least as annoyed as any of us that we don't have more precise defined terms for each variant. But then, we're not all scholars.

And as far as Erasmus, please don't lecture me on his scholarship. I didn't have to go look it up as you just did. I have never doubted his genius.

Sorry, newbie. I have posted a great deal of info on this topic and on this era here at FR, particularly information about Erasmus. Probably you'll get some FReepmail from others telling you "don't get him started on Erasmus". I really should spend more time learning about Tyndale's work and some of the other early translators. I'm not sure we've ever had a Tyndale thread.

[George W. Bush]

It is just a shame that he could not seem to find one for the last page of Revelation.

I never said Erasmus was perfect. The relatively small defects in his work are correctible. No one went to hell because of his minor mistranslations on the last page of Revelation. If they didn't get the point by the last page of the Bible, they weren't going to get it anyway. Still, you make a valid point.

btw, i could not get this to space properly, how does one insert spaces in HTML?

Well, instead of waiting for God to divinely inspire you to true and perfect translation of your thoughts to HTML, I'll just hint to use the NBSP tag. To use it, insert a &nbsp; (in order to display that, I had to use the sinister &amp; tag). I'll start the next line with a half dozen of them.

      See how easy it is?

There are quite a number of these special tags.

Just my 2¢.

[George W. Bush]

ftD, I try to follow a rule of thumb never to post more than 3 consecutive posts, even if I'm catching up with a thread.

Dang. Now this little blurb makes four in a row. Go ahead and call me a demonstrable hypocrite.

[Jael]

They are the daughters of Rome. Rome could not of been reformed, she was never right in the first place. :-)

[Jael]

"They make the Cross of Christ of non effect with their view of Unconditional election."

Amen. I was thinking that during my Bible study the other day.


1 Corinthians 1:17  ¶For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.

18  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

[RnMomof7]

Gee, you must have forgotten John. 12:32 was in the Bible!

That All is addressed to the Jews that thought they were Gods only people..the all means all nations and kinds..It means He has sheep in other flocks

Act 13:48 And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord: and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.